


The Small God of Things

by Prochytes



Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 08:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13677576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: Jessica experiences a pint-sized epiphany, accompanied by booze, reciprocal sarcasm, and arm-wrestling.





	The Small God of Things

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Thor: Ragnarok_ . Jessica’s memory adapts a portion of Raymond Chandler’s _Farewell, My Lovely_. Swearing.

The back room at Freddy’s Bar was always dimly lit. Jessica paused on the threshold until her eyes adjusted. The initial gloom resolved itself into glints from a metric fuck-ton of bottles, carelessly disposed across the entirety of the single table and the floor. Between the darkness and the serried glimmers, the room looked like the cave of forty dipsomaniacal thieves.

There were bottles of bourbon. There were bottles of brandy. There were bottles of about seven different beers, including the German one that Matt favoured, even though he surely knew from across a room that it tasted like piss. There was a bottle of that weird green French shit that you were supposed to cremate a sugar-cube before you drank.

The bottles were so many, and so various, that they nearly diverted Jessica’s gaze from the woman behind them. The stranger’s cheeks were bright with odd tattoos, which almost seemed to glow against her tan skin. Probably a trick of the meagre light. She was short, though Jessica saw muscle in her shoulders and upper arms.

“Who are you?” the lone drinker asked, without apparent interest.

“Jessica Jones.” Jessica kicked off the doorframe and walked into the room. “I’m here to bring a message from the management. He’d like you to consider drinking up and going home. Last orders were about an hour and a half ago.”

The stranger snorted. “Why couldn’t he bring that message to me himself?”

“Because you’ve bought enough booze to see you through to 2027, and he thought that you’d be pissed to have to leave it. He’s a bit scared of you.” Jessica identified a bottle that still had contents. She raised it to her lips, and took a swig. “I’m not.”

The tattoos glinted as their wearer cocked her head. “You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you, Jessica Jones?”

“I get by. And I don’t have go-faster stripes on my face, so there’s that.”

“Are you the owner’s lackey?”

Jessica considered slamming the Bottle Fairy’s head into the table. But she was a solid citizen, now – a Defender, even. She was mature enough to rise above such taunts. “No. Freddy keeps my whiskies double, and my credit long, and he’s one of about eight bar-owners who haven’t blacklisted me. That earns him some favours.”

“I see.” The stranger rested her head against the wall, and shut her eyes. “Would you like to hear a secret, Jessica Jones?”

“Do I get a choice?” Jessica had known a lot of drunks.

“No. The secret is this: I have been on the mudball you call ‘home’ for eighteen hours. And there’s nothing in this wasteland that gets me wasted.”

“That must be rough. I’ll get my lawyer to pray for you. Are you going to leave? And, as a supplemental, who exactly the fuck do you think you are?”

“Bored with questions and answers, now.” The tattooed woman swayed forward once more, and opened her eyes. “Let’s play a game.”

“I don’t do cards.”

“Neither do I.” The tattooed woman planted her right elbow in the middle of the table, making a sinewy right-angle of her upper and lower arm.

Jessica stared, and lowered the bottle. “You want to arm-wrestle?”

“Do I look like I’m practising a mime?”

“That’s… really not a good idea.” Defender – mature. “What are you, twelve?”

“I see.” The stranger smiled lazily. “Jessica Jones is _scared_.”

Maturity could be tabled for a night. Jessica took off her jacket, and sat down, sweeping glass from the field of battle. “I can spare a couple of seconds to whip your ass.”

***

“Would you like to hear the rules?” the stranger asked, as Jessica adjusted her elbow.

“Name them.”

“I’ll answer any yes/no question – so long as we wrestle. Your window is only open until you lose.”

“What happens when I win?”

“Cocky. I hate cocky.”

“You’ll answer promptly?” Jessica knew that this was an idle question – the Bottle Fairy, after all, was about to go down harder than Wilson Fisk on a water-slide – but there had been a time when exact wording was her only fragment of salvation.

“Expedishioushly,” said the stranger, confirming to Jessica’s relief that she was, in fact, at least a little wasted.

“And honestly?”

The tattooed woman scowled. She drew herself up to her full height, which, Jessica uncharitably noted, didn’t take long. “I am always honest. I happen to be more-or-less a god.”

Jessica sniggered. “God of what, exactly? Sarcasm and problem drinking? In fairness, that’s a faith I could get behind.”

“You are _tiny_.”

“Sure thing, short stuff.” Jessica leaned forward and wrapped her fingers around the stranger’s. “Are you here to boast, or to wrestle?”

The stranger yawned. “Whenever you’re ready.”

***

There is an art to not maiming morons who are in above their heads. Jessica had spent more than a decade perfecting it.

She had generally avoided directly confrontational tests of strength against anyone – except for Luke, who could take it – since one unfortunate episode during her teens. (In her defence, the clean fracture hadn’t actually hampered Billy Whitman’s subsequent college football career, and he had been much less of a dick once the cast came off.) Where avoidance was impossible, however, Jessica had grown reasonably adroit at calibration.

Her opponent’s arms and shoulders, and readiness to wrestle in the first place, bespoke someone who liked to keep herself in shape. In the interests of a speedy outcome, Jessica carefully visualized slightly more than the degree of force that she typically rolled out for practising Normal Person Combat Moves with Trish. This should result in a swift and sure encounter of the Bottle Fairy’s wrist with the unforgiving wood, in a fashion that would brutalize her ego, but not her tendons. Once that was clear in Jessica’s head, she nodded at her adversary, and began to push.

The Bottle Fairy’s hand did not shift from the perpendicular, at all. Her face mirrored Jessica’s own consternation.

“That’s unexpected,” the stranger said. “And I don’t think you’re even really trying. How much are you hiding, Jessica Jones?”

“Let me show you.” Jessica bent her head, and piled on the power. Finally – _finally_ – her opponent’s hand quivered in retreat. Satisfaction mingled with just a dash of worry. It took less effort to stop a moving car than to shift the tattooed woman’s wrist a finger’s width.

Jessica’s adversary grimaced, and finally abandoned her negligent slouch. She squared her shoulders, and leaned forward. Bottle Fairy boasted a long neck for a short woman, and not unpleasing boobs. Jessica wondered for a moment whether this was a distraction play, but her opponent didn’t have a lot of choice with the leaning because, as noted, short. Dark eyes stared into Jessica’s, and then…

_Fuck._

Jessica hadn’t been the only one with the child brakes on.

***

“If you can’t spare the strength to speak, silence is golden,” Bottle Fairy said brightly. Bitch.

Such… a strong… bitch.

Jessica contorted in her seat, seeking some mitigation of the strain. She found none. The two hands – pale and tan, locked in the struggle for mastery – trembled back to the zenith, and beyond. She was losing. Search as she would, she couldn’t find an answer to the other woman’s grip.

_Then P. I. up, Jones. If you can’t find an answer, find a question._

“Who… are you?” Jessica just about managed to make it sound more like a growl than a gasp. A small win was still a win.

“Uh-uh.” Bottle Fairy sounded calmly amused, but Jessica could tell that she was controlling her breathing. This wasn’t as easy for her as she was making it look. Heartening, because, right now, she was making the rout of NYC’s most steel-tipped gumshoe look pretty fucking easy. Jessica gritted her teeth as another precious sliver of space defected. “Yes/no questions only, Jessica Jones. Remember?”

“You’re not… from around here.” Jessica writhed in her chair again. She tried to recall what Danny had told her, once, about posture, and the geometries of directed force. That was the problem with The Iron Fist. Every now and again, he actually spouted something useful, but he always buried it in so much horseshit about polishing your chakras that Jessica tended to zone out and think of beer.

The memory of Danny kindled an idea, though. “Are you… from K’un-Lun?”

“No, wherever that may be. Does it have a bar?”

“I… don’t know. Not… in _Lonely Planet_.” Always a long shot, anyway. The hand that was grinding down the inches between Jessica and defeat showed no sign of twinkle-digit action.

“‘Lonely planet’,” the tattooed woman snorted. “If only.”

Planet. _Mudball_. “You’re not from Earth, are you?”

Her opponent glared. “No.” That sinewy arm corded, and now the strain was like nothing Jessica had ever known. One fierce, joyous thought stabbed through the fatigue: _I’ve hit a nerve; she’s in a hurry to end this._

_Okay, Jones. You’re a tough bitch. Five foot nine of iron woman. Hard muscles and no glass jaw. You can take it._

_You can keep your wrist off the wood for one more question._

“Are you from…” _More-or-less a god_ – of course. What was the name of that fucking place? “… Asgard?”

Her adversary winced, and spat out “Yes”, just as Jessica’s hand slammed into the oak.

***

Both women slumped. The table groaned operatically, and collapsed.

The stranger stared at Jessica for a long moment. She reached for a bottle of bourbon beside her, and took an eye-watering gulp from it. Then, she proffered the whiskey to Jessica.

“You are strong, Jessica Jones,” the tattooed woman said quietly.

“Like I said,” Jessica accepted the bottle, swigged, and massaged her wrist, “I get by.”

“Our struggle taxed me. That was… surprising. How does a girl from Midgard make me have to strain?”

“If you wanted answers, you should have written that into your rules. Let’s call me an outlier, and leave it there.”

“An outlier,” the stranger repeated, as she took back the bottle, “hmm.”

“You’re really from Asgard? Like Hammer-Guy?”

“There’s been rebranding. And also actual branding.”

“Why are you here?”

The stranger frowned. “No more questions, Jessica Jones. The contest is over, and you lost.”

“Maybe. But I’m more than just my muscle.” Jessica rolled bourbon around her tongue, remembering. “You said that you had been here eighteen hours. There might have been a time when your people hung out Earth-side just to hide the Atlantic Ocean in someone’s Frappucino for the lulz; those days are long gone. Something important must have brought you here. Yet now you’re soaking – incompetently – by yourself.”

The tattooed woman’s eyes narrowed. Jessica continued:

“By yourself. Your people are social animals, except maybe that skinny one with the hat like a coat-stand. You didn’t want any of them to see you like this. Whatever brought you here, it’s got you rattled. Maybe scared.”

“Tread very lightly, strong little Earth girl,” the stranger said, in a soft, level voice. “I have seen your limits. You have not seen mine.”

“I don’t think that you scare easy.” This next bit was a leap. Jessica knew the risks, in her line of work, that arose from mistaking a scene for a mirror. But she had already been humiliated once tonight. No reason not to double down. “I think that, perhaps, you scare for other people. Maybe that wasn’t always so. But now it is, and you’re afraid it makes you weak, so you climb into a bottle – incompetently – to forget it.” Jessica spoke carefully, keeping her body loose. It would be the fight of her life if this woman turned ugly. “Am I close?”

The stranger bowed her head. Almost a minute passed before she spoke.

“I had an enemy,” she said, finally, “long ago. Until the day I faced her, I had always been faster, stronger, tougher than anyone I knew. Against that enemy, I was nothing. She made me nothing.” The tattooed woman raised the bottle to her lips; paused for a moment; put it down. “I stayed nothing for longer than you can imagine. I got used to it. But now…” She sighed. "This city's wizard brought me here, to a council of war. A great battle is coming. For the first time in centuries, I care about the outcome."

"And so the booze?"

"And so the booze."

“Giving a damn’s like riding a bike, isn’t it? It makes you look ridiculous. And yet you never really lose the knack.”

“I don’t know what that means. But the shape of it feels right.”

“Believe me – it is.” Jessica hesitated before ploughing on: “You _had_ an enemy.”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill her, in the end?”

“No. A fire giant the size of a mountain killed her. But I was there.”

“In Midgard, we call that an ‘assist’.”

The stranger chuckled. “That feels right, as well.” She surveyed the wreckage of the table. “I should recompense the barkeep for his furniture.”

“I think that you’re already good for that.” According to Freddy, the stranger had been putting vague but substantial quantities of what looked like big gold coins behind the bar all night. She had paid off the tab, and, quite possibly, most of Freddy’s mortgage.

“Excellent. I shall leave this place, then.” The tattooed woman looked Jessica up and down. “How was Jessica Jones planning to use her strong hands and her quick wits for the rest of this earthly night?”

Jessica’s brow wrinkled. “Was that a come-on?” The stranger was undeniably hot, in a disgruntled godling way. "I... could be tempted."

“No. This is.”

Jessica’s augmented reflexes gave her enough time to brace, which was just as well. Even so, she slightly dented the wall.

“Tell me to stop, if this does not please you.” The stranger’s mouth was hot and urgent on her neck. “Do not feel that you must yield because you were bested.”

“That’s… sweet.” Jessica made a prudent attempt to get ahead with the oxygen intake, foreseeing a likely drought in the near future. “Very, er, New Viking.” She stifled a moan as the stranger’s thigh rubbed against her own. “I’ll give you a pass on the creepy, this one time.”

“The spoils of battle are better shared.” The big eyes, lifted for a moment from Jessica’s cleavage, were bright, inviting.

“My turn to let you in on a secret, short stuff.” God, it felt good to grind again against someone who you knew could more than match you. Jessica shut her eyes; summoned all the supple strength that she could muster. A long night ahead, and she was out of practice. “The Big Apple comes pre-spoiled.”

FINIS


End file.
